Certificate IV in Commercial Cookery

This comprehensive course is designed to provide students with the wide range of skills and knowledge required not only to become competent as a qualified chef or cook but also to gain a range of supervisory or leadership skills that will enhance graduate employability and future opportunities as a chef. Students are required to complete the Certificate III in Commercial Cookery units in their first year. Throughout the first year, students develop extensive practical food preparation cooking and presentation skills. In second year, student will develop kitchen management and leadership skills.

This certificate is designed to prepare students for a career as a Senior Chef or Chef de Cuisine and offers advanced skills in the areas of kitchen supervision, advanced food preparation and cookery. This includes staff supervision skills, stock control process, financial management and advanced catering skills. These skills are developed through a range of face to face theory delivery, practical training sessions in commercial hotel kitchens and industry work placement programs.

Students are required to undertake industry workplace training in various kitchen settings, such as in restaurants, hotels, clubs, pubs, cafes, cafeterias and coffee shops. At the end of the course, students are expected to operate independently or with limited guidance from others and use discretion to solve non-routine problems in a commercial kitchen.

This qualification provides a pathway to work in various kitchen settings, such as restaurants, hotel, clubs, pubs, cafes, cafeterias and coffee shops. Possible job titles include:

• Chef
• Chef de partie
• Chef de cuisine

RPL is available to anyone who has experience working in a commercial kitchen.

RPL:

• provides an alternative pathway to achieving a qualification without course attendance
• is a consultative process between with the candidate and the assessor to determine whether the candidate has acquired the requisite learning, skills and knowledge to demonstrate that they have achieved the required learning outcomes or performance criteria of the course or qualification, for which the candidate is seeking
• identifies where appropriate additional learning experiences or training gaps are needed to achieve the course or qualification
• is the conduct of an assessment to confirm competency.

APSI has developed a process that promotes holistic and task-based assessment. It focuses on relating assessment activities to actual job tasks. The intention of this model is to streamline and simplify the process of recognising competency.

Prior to RPL, information is provided to the candidate on the assessment process. Specific advice is given to each candidate on how they can demonstrate their competence and what documentary evidence is required to support their application. Each industry has unique documents that can provide evidence of experience and competence.

The candidate is required to provide adequate information prior to, throughout and after a training and assessment experience. The assessor, in this process, needs to be fully aware of the needs of the candidate and help them identify relevant workplace personnel who can confirm the candidate's competency.

The focus of the APSI streamlined holistic assessment process is to focus on demonstrated skills and knowledge and not to rely purely on documentary evidence as the main source of evidence.

Some examples of documentary evidence that can support the process include:

• licences such as First Aid, RSA
• CV or work history with details of job role and responsibilities
• previous qualifications from overseas and Australia
• certificates and records of results or assessments completed with other RTO's
• photographs of work undertaken
• samples of related project work
• diaries of tasks performed
• task sheets/job sheets/logbooks
• site training records
• pay slips / employment contracts / job descriptions
• memberships of relevant professional associations
• references/letters/third party reports from previous employers/supervisors
• industry awards
• performance appraisals

An RPL application kit can be obtained here.